How to Make Yourself Stand Out

Episode 905: How to Make Yourself Stand Out, with Jesse Cole

How to make yourself stand out? Learn from Jesse Cole about his process on how to make yourself stand out.

If you want to learn how to make yourself stand out, then you will learn a lot from our guest in today’s episode, Jesse Cole. He is the founder of Fans First Entertainment and owner of the Savannah Bananas. His teams have welcomed more than one million fans to their ballparks and have been featured on MSNBC, CNN, and ESPN.

The Bananas have been awarded the Organization of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year, Business of the Year, and won the CPL Championship in their first year. Fans First Entertainment has been featured on the INC 5000 lists as one of the fastest-growing companies in America. The Savannah Bananas currently have sold out every game for two straight seasons and have a waiting list in the thousands for tickets.

Jesse is an in-demand speaker and released his first book “Find Your Yellow Tux – How to Be Successful by Standing Out” in January of 2018. The book launched #1 in three categories on Amazon and has been sold in 18 countries. Staying true to his mantra, “Whatever’s normal, do the exact opposite,” Cole launched the book with a World Book Tour at Epcot.

Cole’s greatest mentors are Bill Veeck, P.T. Barnum, and Walt Disney. All three share a wall in his office on custom-made posters that display the words Innovation, Showmanship, and Vision. Cole believes to be successful, you need to learn how to make yourself stand out and be different.

He releases daily videos, blogs, and articles on LinkedIn. He is passionate about creating attention, loving your customers more than your product, and loving your employees more than your customers. Cole is the host of the Business Done Differently Podcast and has been featured on more than 100 podcasts including the Ziglar Show, StoryBrand with Donald Miller and NPR’s Only a Game.

What you will learn from this episode about how to make yourself stand out:

• Why it takes a while to realize what your best at – and why it’s worth it to know how to make yourself stand out
• The origin story of Jesse’s legendary Yellow Tux
• Where Jesse gets his courage
• The incredible formation story of the Savannah Bananas
• How the Savannah Bananas brand has benefited fans and players and why culture is so critical
• Empowering employees to become leaders and make decisions, especially in tough circumstances
• How Jesse draws inspiration from people like Walt Disney and P.T. Barnum
• The future of the Savannah Bananas and how they continue to put fans first

Resources:

• Website: https://findyouryellowtux.com/
• Savannah Bananas Website: https://thesavannahbananas.com/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCasNOOUN7FbQXBUsfZD4Y_Q
• Learn how to make yourself stand out and be different from the rest

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Learn more about how to make yourself stand out from our guest, Mark Levy

 

 

How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners so we can learn their recipe for success, how they built and how they scaled their business. In fact, my team at Predictive ROI. If you’ve not come back to our free resources section on predictiveroi.com in a while, I strongly encourage you to do so because we are building and scaling that section with brand new content, everything from the Trojan Horse to sales to how to build out your client avatar, a brand new handbook, their business to business podcast, and a wide variety of tools, resources insights that we have compiled from the brilliant insights shared by our very generous guest. 

 

Just go to predictiveroi.com/resources and whatever your request, we will send it right to your inbox. 

 

Want to know how to make yourself stand out? Check out this blog from Jesse

 

How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Jesse Cole’s Introduction

 

Before we welcome today’s very special guest, Jesse Cole, let me share some additional context why I was over the moon excited. In fact, Onward Nation, when Jesse and I connected, I said, Holy bananas. And let me give you some context around that, because Jesse is the founder of Fans First Entertainment and is the owner of the Savannah Bananas baseball team.

 

This is going to be a conversation that is going to be, if you want to say, paradigm shifting, game changing, maybe business changing. That’s exactly what this is. Because he has built an entire business, an entire model around standing out the exact opposite of convention, going 180 degrees in the complete opposite direction of competition, being able to stand bravely in front of the skepticism and the criticism, shoving the fear of criticism aside and doing what you know you need to do, and then planting a flag deep in the dirt and saying, this is who we are.

 

This is what we stand for. This is what we serve and the result, outcome. Now almost 60 actually on path to a hundred consecutive sellouts, a long line for season tickets. Recruiting is up, culture is up, and the business is booming. And brand new business models are coming off of that too. So I am so very excited for you to be able to spend some time with Jesse.

 

And so without further ado, welcome to Onward Nation, Jesse.

 

Want to know how to make yourself stand out? Check out this blog from Jesse

 

How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Jesse’s Path and Journey

 

Wow, I am fired up. I’m ready to come to bat right now. And I’ll tell you, Stephen, I’m as I share, a big fan of yours. Man, I love what you’re doing. You’re making an impact. And, I’m honored to be on the show and share some of the craziness and a little bit of the circus that we got here in Savannah.

 

Well, I am honored to have you here, my friend. In fact, let’s keep in on the word circus here for just a second, because I know that you say that in kind of a playful way, but I know there’s also business strategy behind it, too. So take us deeper into that, and then we’ll go into some of the other history behind the bananas.

 

But tell us, like, why did you use the word circus? Because I know you did that on purpose. Okay? Whoever says the most in the least amount of words wins. And I am adamant on sharing what we do in the fewest amount of words. And while many people think we’re a baseball team, it’s more like a circus and a baseball game will break out.

 

And I believe that every business is in the entertainment business, and a lot of people ask the question, you know, what business are you in? But I ask, what business are you really in? And I learned the hard way through the struggle sleeping on an air bed, you know, losing everything to understand that we are 1,000,000% in the entertainment business and we are going all in on that.

 

And baseball is beyond secondary to what we do. It’s our platform on how we put on the show. So when I say it’s a circus when a baseball game breaks out, people hopefully immediately think, this isn’t your typical baseball team. This sounds like fun, and that’s who we are. And we’re very clear. We make baseball fun and that’s what we do.

 

Yeah, you guys have been exceptional at it. When I was studying your book and getting ready for our conversation, there were many lessons that stood out to me. But one of my highlights is when you say it takes a while to realize what you’re best at, and, you know, success is not easy.

 

Want to know how to make yourself stand out? Check out this blog from Jesse

 

How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Success Takes Time

 

Success takes time. Take us into that lesson. Like, why do you feel so strongly that it takes a while to realize what you’re best at? But once you figure it out, drill a depth to really exploit that. I think the brilliant philosopher Will Ferrell said it best when he said, keep throwing darts at the dartboard.

 

You’ll eventually hit the bull’s eye. And, you know, I believe we need to constantly try new things and experiment and reinvent and we had to do that. So when we took over our first team in Gastonia, North Carolina, there were only 200 fans coming to the games, $268 in the bank account. I was the GM right out of college.

 

I don’t know what the owner was thinking. And we had three full time employees and payroll was on Friday, and we had $200 in our bank account, and we had to dramatically reinvent who we are just to survive. You know, I couldn’t pay myself for the first, you know, three, three months. And so what we did is we just started trying things and myself figuring out what am I the best at?

 

At first I was in concessions, I was doing operations, I was selling, I was marketing, I was hiring, I was doing it all. And, you know, I believe there’s a difference between showing up every day on fire versus showing up every day and being a firefighter. And those first few years, I was a firefighter every single day until I realized, you know what?

 

What gives me energy? And Stephen, I challenge anyone we work with. I say, don’t write down just what you like and what you don’t like. Write down your energy list, what things fire you up, and look at your schedule. How many times a day are you doing those things? And so it became clear to me that I loved being on the field.

 

I loved, you know, dancing with the players and pine fans. I love being on stage in front of people and putting on a show. I love sharing what we do. So it became very clear for me, it’s sharing, creating and growing and that’s what I try to do every day. And now I’m my best to everyone I work with.

 

And so, it’s a journey to get there. I learned, you know, putting up signs at the ballpark and doing operational stuff. It’s a disaster. Good luck.

 

Want to know how to make yourself stand out? Check out this blog from Jesse

 

How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Origin Story of Yellow Tux

 

But now that I’ve learned what I do best, that, you know, I bring my best to the world every day. Tell us the origin story of the Yellow Tux. 

 

Because from that moment, my sense is, again, outside looking in. That was like a defining moment for you that you’ve obviously been able to build on from there. But tell us the origin story of the tux. You know, again, it was just kind of a coincidence trying something new similar to us, trying, you know, silhouette underwear nights and flatulence fun nights and big to China night.

 

I mean, we just try things at our ballpark. And so, so, like, this was halfway through, I think it was 2010. We were back with our team in Gastonia, and I said, If I’m on the field putting on a show, you know, every single night, I gotta look like a showman. And for me, you know, I didn’t have any direct mentors.

 

So I started reading every book I could, and I read every book on P.T. Barnum and Walt Disney. And I was like, you know, P.T. Barnum was a showman, and he looked the part. So I called my buddy who owned a bridal informal shop. I go, give me your best tux. I want the tails, I want the top hat, everything.

 

And so he got it for me. Opening night. I’m wearing it. It’s 101 degrees. Oh, my God, I’m like, melting. I’m like, this is the worst. And so I went online and I said, no, I need to get one of lighter color, not black in the middle of the sun in summer. So I found yellow because, you know, the Grizzlies actually had yellow in their color then and in their uniform.

 

So I ordered it from bright colored tuxedos.com. It actually exists. And I had it shipped over the next day, and I wore it and all of a sudden it just took off and started taking pictures. My staff said they always knew where I was, and it became something that I just got comfortable with at our stadium now.

 

And it also amplified who I am. You know, I think everybody has something that makes them stand out. This is me. If you know me, I’m crazy. You know, I talk a lot. I have a lot of energy. It’s fit. And so now I finally get over the fear of not just wearing in our stadium, not just wearing.

 

When I’m speaking. I wear it every day because this is my uniform. When I put this on, it’s showtime and it amplifies who I am. And so that has become a big thing for me. And I believe everyone has something that they may be hiding, that they may be afraid to stand out, that they’re trying to fit in.

 

But when they embrace who they are and amplify it, it’s a game changer. 

 

Want to know how to make yourself stand out? Check out this blog from Jesse

 

How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Bringing A New Team to Savannah

 

That’s awesome. Jesse. Let’s pull back in and talk about the air mattress there for a second. And here’s why I say that. Right. Not only because it’s an incredible story. I mean, it certainly is, but I think it also shows your courage and not just yours, but your wife’s too, because you both put it on the line that the, you know, you moved and and now all of a sudden, here we are.

 

Air mattress. Really put it on a line and then how you still had the courage to go up and do a press conference and name the team and release the name of the team, the Savannah bananas in knowing, knowing that you were going to get some criticism, but being prepared for it, but knowing you’re going to. And so when I read that story, I’m like, man, this really takes courage.

 

And I have got to talk with Jesse about that. Like, how did you do that? That takes courage, immense amounts of courage. Thank you. And to be honest, the courage is a lot for my wife. I struggled with it immensely. I didn’t sleep, but she believed in me and believed in what we were doing more than anything.

 

And so I give 100% of the credit to Emily, for leading us in that direction. But to share how we got there, I think everyone’s always looking to go to that bigger playground. And so for us, we were in Gastonia, a small town outside of Charlotte. We started selling out games after failing in the beginning. And we saw this bigger playground in Savannah, Georgia.

 

The former professional team, you know, realized they didn’t have the support in town and they wanted a new stadium. And the city said no. So they left and put context for the listeners. We’re college summer baseball. We’re not even professional. We’re one of the lowest levels there is in Dayton. And we went to that stadium and saw this epic 1926 ballpark that the greats played at, and Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron and FDR gave a presidential address there.

 

And we saw this. Yeah. It’s huge. We saw this opportunity that something special could happen there. And so we called the commissioner league and said, we want to bring a team to Savannah. And somehow we convinced the city to let this college summer team come in. And we showed up that first day on October 5th, 2015. And the former team, unfortunately, they cut the phone lines, they cut the internet lines.

 

They took everything out of the stadium. And it was my wife and I, our 24 year old president and 322 year old colleague that we found in an abandoned storage building, brought in a picnic table from the park, and we started working there on our cell phones. And it was an unbelievable leap of courage. But we believed in it.

 

Want to know how to make yourself stand out? Check out this blog from Jesse

 

How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Naming The Team “Savannah Bananas”

 

We believed that we were going to create this experience that made baseball fun, that care for people. So we believe we’re going to do it. So we came into this town, you know, telling everybody, and we sold one season ticket in the first two months. Oh my gosh, it was painful. And we were bleeding money every single day.

 

And no one believed in us. And what we realized, what we were doing. Steve, at this point I was afraid I wasn’t wearing the yellow tuxedo at that point. We were trying to be like everyone else. We were marketing like everyone else, putting ourselves on social media, newspapers, radio. And so people were treating us like everyone else.

 

Like, this is just another team that’s here to fail. And it got so bad that on January 15th, 2016, 445 on a Friday, my wife and I were at my college roommates wedding. We got a call from one of our employees and said, we just over drafted our account. We’re completely out of money. And my wife turned to me and she said, wow.

 

She goes, I guess our only option is we need to sell our house. And I was like, what? Our dream house in Charlotte. It was our first house. We built it, we renovated, we made it beautiful. So we have no other options. So we sold the house and we said, we gotta get down in Savannah full time.

 

We got to be there to support this team and be there for our people. And so we went down there. We found this place that was on the market for three years. No one wanted it. It was the nastiest place you could ever imagine. I walked in and immediately walked out. I said, there’s no way. So we bought it.

 

And we got an air bed. And my wife actually is a great air bed shopper. I don’t know why she would be, but she bought a twin air bed. So imagine my wife and I sleeping on a twin air bed. When I go in the middle of the night to get water, she’s airborne when I come back to the air.

 

But, it was quite the experience. And those nights, she just kept convincing, you know, Jesse. Believable. What we’re doing, it’s different. You know, we’re providing something. Every ticket, all in all inclusive. Includes all your food, all your soda. We’re not nickel and diming people. We’re having dancing choirs. We’re having entertainment. We just got to get the eyes and ears of everyone to get them to believe in who we are.

 

And that’s when we knew. We can’t hide anymore. We have to go different ways. We have to go dramatic and we have to name the team after a fruit. And so we decided at that point, name the team Savannah Bananas. And we had a whole plan. We were gonna have a senior citizen dance team called the Banana Nanas. Now we’re going to dance to, you know, Justin Timberlake.

 

You know, our mascot was going to be named split. We were going to have promotions from the top deck where we throw bananas and people catch them in their pants, and it’s called banana in the pants. I mean, we had all these ideas and we were like, we’re going to do it. And so on February 25th, 2016, we announced the name, and nationally it went viral.

 

Want to know how to make yourself stand out? Check out this blog from Jesse

 

How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Embracing Criticism

 

Number one, trending on Twitter. Merchandise was selling all over the country. Except not many people knew that our first shipment of t-shirts came in the week before, and there were too many ends in bananas. Bananas were spelled wrong, so we made so many mistakes. But what happens? We got the attention. However, locally we got crucified. The owner should be thrown out of town.

 

You guys are an embarrassment to the city. Leave now. You’ll never sell a ticket. Get out of our town. Hate email, but we got their attention and we embrace that criticism. We said, you know what? We’re going to keep having fun, and we’re going to start introducing the dancing players and all the promotions. And people started paying attention.

 

And what I realized at that point is that attention beats marketing 1,000% of the time, because people need to understand who you are and what you stand for. And so what we did is we created that attention and we stopped doing what everyone else is doing. And that’s kind of the big premise of what fans first entertainment is.

 

It’s to stop doing what customers hate, stop marketing. Like everyone else, start delivering an amazing experience and care for your fans, care for your people more, and the results take care of themselves. And now, fortunately, we saw that every game for three straight seasons and it’s absolutely unbelievable. I think it is unbelievable. It’s an amazing story.

 

Want to know how to make yourself stand out? Check out this blog from Jesse

 

How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Selling Tickets to People for Experience

 

So, let’s follow that timeline through a little bit more to like, go. When did you guys start to see momentum, where you and Emily could look at each other and say, yeah, we’re getting some traction here. This is really starting to feel like we’re not there yet, but now we’ve got a good litmus test that we’re heading in the right direction.

 

You know, we started, when people started paying attention to the all inclusive tickets and, like, wait, you get all your burgers, your hot dogs, your chicken sandwiches, soda, your water, your popcorn, your dessert, and your ticket for $15. They were like, this is crazy. And then we availed our banana shaped tickets that were scratch and sniff and smelled like bananas.

 

And people were like, what? These guys are crazy. And so we started coming up with all these different things. And there was a puppy that was abandoned at our stadium and, but she was about the size of like a fist, I mean, tiny, tiny. And so we put out a press release and named her our bat dog.

 

There was no chance she could ever carry a bat. The bat was three times the size of her, but we announced she is a bat dog, and people started covering us and talking about it. So like, these guys are different. And all of a sudden, we sold out our first game and then another game, and then people started coming to the games.

 

And again, we don’t spend any dollars marketing. We spend all of our money on the experience. So once people came to the games and they saw the banana nanas and they saw a breakdancing first base coach, and they saw a 30 piece pep band, and they saw 4000 people singing against each other in sign offs. And our turtle versus toddler race, where we actually have toddlers on the field racing a turtle mascot.

 

It’s the world’s slowest race ever. And, so they’re watching this and they’re like, this is something special. And what I challenge when we work with these companies is our live workshop. What we do is we challenge them, say, what are people saying when they leave? Your experience and what we want them to leave is say, you won’t believe what I saw at the ballpark today.

 

Yeah. Because what remarkable means is, are people willing to remark about your experience, and you have to really focus on what is that experience you’re designing and how are you making people feel? I mean, there’s a reason when players come up and deliver roses to a little three year old, they get on their knees and deliver a rose to a three year old.

 

Want to know how to make yourself stand out? Check out this blog from Jesse

 

How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Creating Something Different in the Industry

 

In the crowd. You see parents start getting happy tears and getting emotional. It’s also those types of moments that matter most. Well, and when you said that they’ll remark about it, you know, Seth Godin talks about it, right? Are you remarkable for exactly that reason? Right. Yes. It’s fascinating. Someone reached out to me about six months ago.

 

They say, hey, are you close with Seth Godin? I go, that would be amazing. But no, I just read every one of his books. He goes, he was just talking about you for a while on our podcast. I go, no way. And all of a sudden someone reached out, said, hey, was talking about you on a podcast.

 

He was talking about what we’re doing with the bananas and the yellow talks movement and everything. I was like, blown away. I finally sent him a video to thank him and again, I never talked to him before. But fortunately we’ve been creating something that’s different. That’s not just a little bit faster, a little bit cheaper, a little bit better.

 

It’s the only and I challenge every business. How are you the only in your industry? Because if you’re just a little bit faster, you know you’re not going to stand out. Absolutely. It’s impossible to commoditize what it is that you guys are doing. So let’s take this piece into culture, because, you know, when again, getting ready for our conversation, hearing about, you know, you delivering a presentation on campus, Georgia Southern.

 

If I have the institution. Correct, I think so. And then the professor in that class said, I think I’m going to test Jesse’s theory here, and that turned into a really fascinating data set that then proved about culture and their performance. Take us inside that, because I think that that was really revealing.

 

And that will be very helpful for Onward Nation business owners. I believe everyone talks about culture and says, oh, we have to have a great culture, but they don’t spend as much time and resources and emphasis on their culture because you can’t measure it. There’s no ROI on culture. You can put $5 on a Facebook ad and measure it, and I think that’s been one of the challenges.

 

Want to know how to make yourself stand out? Check out this blog from Jesse

 

How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Creating a Fun Culture

 

Everyone says you can have a good culture, but you can’t measure it. And so, you know, for a while we’ve been looking at this and saying, hey, we may not have the best players in the world, but we win more games than everyone else. And we also say like, hey, you know, I don’t know what’s happening, but we have all millennials.

 

And in our first three years we had zero turnover, and the average millennial leaves a job every 13 months. And like something’s going on here. And you know, we do things we send our people on surprise bucket list trips with their parents and their best friends. And we do all that. And with our players, we really focus on the experience.

 

But we just talked about it. And so when I’m speaking in front of groups, I talk about the culture and the things that we do to actually map the experience for our people, our employees and our players. And this one professor was just, I guess, I mean, saying there’s no way that’s true. You know, I’m going to look into this.

 

I didn’t know it at the time, I was flying to a conference to speak, and I got an email and said, Jesse, I’ve compiled all the results of, you know, all the bananas players and everyone else in the league over the last three years. And to share my own hypothesis on your thoughts on culture and atmosphere and how it leads to better performance, I think you’re going to be really intrigued by the results.

 

And I was like, oh, no. Did he find out it didn’t work? I was like, this is ugly. So as I’m going into his class, he goes, Jesse, you may want to sit down for this. I’m like, oh, this is really ugly. So I sit down for this and he starts this whole PowerPoint presentation and he goes, Mr. Cole said this on this date that they play better.

 

They may not have the best players. I’m like, this is detailed. He goes, I looked at the stats of every player that played Division one baseball the last three years for not only the bananas, but every team in our league, which is 16 teams. And I want to see do players actually play better for the bananas? And so he looked at offensive statistics and the, on base percentage plus slugging percentage.

 

Ops is one of the most well known statistics now in baseball. Right. So I looked at it for every player and to have a strong correlation to show that there’s actually some type of positive relationship, you got to be under 0.05 in a statistic I don’t under stats. That’s what he did. He goes so I came up with this.

 

The numbers in every team in the league was like .7.8.5. There was zero correlation. And then I came up with Savannah bananas and it was 0.018. I was like, no, no, this can’t be. So then he did another one. He looked at the walk ratio. Then he looked at a ten. Then he looked at more offense. It goes to 0.0150.008 points.

 

Every single one showed a strong correlation. And I go so he’s showing this presentation to me. I’m like my mind is blown. And he goes, it is proven that by a player simply putting on a bananas uniform and playing in your culture, they will perform better bar none. And I’m like, this is crazy. And he said, it’s proven.

 

And it’s not only just at your ballpark, it’s the culture that you create when they’re on the road. It happens everywhere. And so I share this with our coach. And he was like, this is what I’m talking about. I’m like, I thought this was what we’re talking about. But now we have proof. And it showed that if you’re a part of a culture where people care, where there’s a great atmosphere, an environment, and you put fun first, and I don’t want to like fun.

 

They have the time of their life. They’re in music videos. Our players do parody music videos. I mean, it’s ridiculous. They have so much fun playing in front of 4000 people every night. Our players even go on dates with fans in the middle of the game. We actually set up a date where we’ll have a saxophone player and a catered meal.

 

They have so much fun that they play better and they win. And if you’re a business owner listening right now, what are you doing to create that fun culture where people feel cared for and they don’t? They’re not worrying about what they have to do. They’re worrying about having a great time while doing it? And then the results take care of themselves.

 

Want to know how to make yourself stand out? Check out this blog from Jesse

 

How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Managing The Players

 

So it was eye opening, and it’s going to push us even further on delivering this amazing culture. Yeah. That’s awesome. And what impact has that had on your ability to recruit players? It’s comical because we’ve had you know, we have almost a thousand players that try to play for us in a season. And we signed 30 players.

 

Wow. And so I’m fortunate our coaching staff handles everything and it’s based on relationships. Now, I’ve only been involved with two players that I’ve recruited. One was Russell Wilson, the starting quarterback for the Seahawks. Really, who played for our team in Gastonia in 2009 and this past season, a singing Nashville star who’s got hundreds of thousands of followers.

 

He’s got hits because I could see the opportunity for him to play music and play baseball. It was two guys that I’ve recruited and everyone else, our coaching staff handles it. And, you know, we’re just very fortunate, lucky. And our goal is simple. We want this to be the best summer of our players’ lives. We want them to never forget it, create memories, create moments for. 

 

They’re part of it, and we hope we can do the same for them. 

 

Want to know how to make yourself stand out? Check out this blog from Jesse

 

How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Learning About The Principles

 

So let’s take this into, even further into the business context now. Because I know that that has become a passion of yours too, a real love of being able to to teach this now to not not to anybody who will listen but actually teach it in the form of curriculum, like teaching this to other business owners, leaders and so forth.

 

So, break that down. Give us some of the highlights, like when you’re in full on teaching mode, what are some of the principles that you’re teaching? Well, our goal is very simple. We are teaching the fans first experience and how to turn customers into fans. And so what I believe is that the customers are the marketers and that we need to stop marketing and start putting on a show.

 

So when I’m on stage and doing a keynote, I’ll actually put on a show the whole performance. I’ll bring people on stage. We’ll have, they’ll be involved in promotions, but we’re showing how to put on the show and map the experience from the first touch point, all the way past that last impression. And so to give you an example, we map everything.

 

So when people come to our live workshops, they go through this on how to map this amazing experience and really entertain their customers. Because I’ve shared before every business in the entertainment business. So what are you doing to entertain your clients? So for instance, Stephen A, give an example, you know, on our website, when someone buys a ticket, the first thing that happens they get an email saying congrats, you just made the best decision. Your day. 

 

Then they have a video that was sent and it’s with art. It’s right now. As your ticket order came in, a siren went off. Throughout the entire stadium are bananas, put on their banana suits, ran to the ticket laboratory, start assembling your tickets, a banana. Nana walked in and perfectly selected your tickets and put them on a silk pillow.

 

She now walked them through the stadium as we had a surveillance interview for your tickets. And now your tickets are in our vault. They’re in maximum security and they’re ready for you to go bananas. So that is the video that they get. We showed that all then. Right after that, Stephen, they get a thank you call. And so like right now my desk we have thank you calls myself as the owner.

 

Everyone else is our staff. We call every single person that buys a ticket online from us and just thank them. And a lot of times they were like, did my credit card not work? Like, no, we are calling you to thank you. And I’ll say, hey, have you seen a crazy guy in a yellow tuxedo at the game? Make sure you come over and say hello.

 

And I can’t tell you the amount of people that horn’s like, I can’t believe you call me and thank you, thank me. I go, are you kidding me? I can’t believe companies and businesses that don’t call and thank their customers, right? How many times do you go to a restaurant? You walk out and no one thanks you for eating in there.

 

So that’s how the experience starts. Now I just show up to the stadium. We also send out a pregame playlist that our players mix, of songs that you can listen to. It’s worth thinking about the experience coming to the ballpark. Then as you pull up to our stadium, the first thing you’ll see is Penguins. Not real penguins.

 

They would never survive in Savannah, but we call them our parking penguins. We dress up. People are parking attendants in penguin costumes. Why does it make any sense? Of course not. But the idea. I thought of people dressed up in penguin costumes. Parking your car is pretty funny. And so now, this past year, when the park and penguins get out of your car, they’ll have freezy pops to give to the kids and say, stay cool tonight.

 

Then we actually have a deal with a golf cart company, and we’ll have our players pick up some fans in a golf cart from the parking lot, bring them up to the stadium while we’re doing golf cart karaoke and playing songs to golf cart karaoke. The other fans that are walking up the first thing they’ll see on the walkway are our players passing our programs, signing autographs, taking pictures.

 

Then you’ll see our pep band playing Rocky Music and Final Countdown. Then as you walk past them, you’ll come up to our gate to enter the stadium and you’ll see our ticket takers dressed up in banana costumes, ripping your banana shake. Tickets. So this is how we mapped the experience. It sounds like a lot. And believe me, for everyone listening, it’s like, yeah, it is a lot, but we’ve been doing this now for ten, 15 years.

 

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How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Understanding Industry Problems

 

It didn’t start like that. You start with a few big things now we’re even getting into our bathrooms like our biggest rival is making bacon. So of course, in the men’s bathrooms we have bacon Journal cakes. So like, we map it. What? You know, of course what is a bad experience? So how do we teach you to keep it simple?

 

You got me on a tangent because I get excited about this. It’s Stephen, to be very clear, it’s problems, processes, people. You first got to understand what are the problems in your industry. What are the problems in your customer experience? How do you find that in numerous ways? One way we do it is we go undercover. Everyone on our staff goes undercover.

 

One night there was an undercover fan, and we parked with the fans. We wait in line with the fans, we sit with the fans and we write down notes and meet after the game and talk about what we can do to get better so we realize the problems, and then we map this process and go all out. And then we teach how to get buy-in from your people and really become a fans first business.

 

Yeah, it’s I’m hearing you, share that. I think. Okay, this makes perfect sense as to why one of your heroes is Walt Disney. Right. Like you’re thinking about this? Yes. All of it is fun. And all of it provides a great experience. Fans first totally understand that. But underlying all of it and driving all of it is a business strategy.

 

And without a doubt, business strategy manifested itself as fun. And when I think about all the touchpoints, all the interactions, all of it is very carefully orchestrated. It’s not just, you know, chaos. You’ve thought very carefully about each of these different touchpoints in making that and putting the customer first. Absolutely. But as being driven by business strategy, at least that’s my observation.

 

Is that a fair assessment? Yeah. Well, you got to be clear on who you are. So, for instance, our bathrooms don’t have chandeliers. They don’t have marble. They’re not the nicest bathrooms. We’re in a 1926 ballpark. Right. That’s who our brand is. We’re not the GQ. We’re not the vogue without the cosmopolitan. We’re fun. And so we’re very clear on every step that we’re doing.

 

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How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Talking About the Big Vision for the Business

 

We are fun. And I think what it challenges is companies that don’t have clarity. They don’t know who they are, they don’t know what they stand for. And what I love about Walt Disney is he was so clear. You know, I have a custom poster of Walt in my office and it says vision. And it’s kind of fun to do the impossible.

 

And what we always think is, what is that impossible? What is that crazy experience? What is something that people will go home and say, you won’t believe what I just saw at the ballpark tonight. And by thinking about that and mapping it, writing it down, it gives us a bigger sense of purpose. And our big vision is to bring fans first to the world and how we’re going to do that is through this team, through teaching fans first and live workshops and books to come, and then eventually taking the show on the road like the Globetrotters.

 

And I think clarity is so important and I didn’t have it, Steve and I, the first 15 years I was giving away porta johns at the ballparks, I was giving away colon cleansings, I mean, you name it. We were just trying crazy ideas, having fun. But now as we’ve got clarity and got a great team behind us, it’s amazing how fast we’re growing because we know exactly what our next step is.

 

Well, sure. And going back to you and your wife, Emily, I think this going back to the courage piece, there’s so many people who doubted what you’re going to do, what you’re going to have is Disneyland. What? Right. I mean, there’s so many people who. Yeah, who doubted his vision, never saw it. He clearly saw it. He and Roy obviously saw it, but.

 

And you and Emily saw it. You use what is happening now, today, and maybe even what’s going to happen 18 months or now. You saw it years ago and that’s so amazing. Well, I think if you can really simplify it, I will try to simplify everything and what do your customers hate? What’s a problem in your industry? Do the opposite.

 

Like just do the opposite. I can’t tell you Stephen. It’s crazy to me when I call my bank and it takes me nine minutes, ten minutes to be able to talk to someone, right? There’s not one person in the world that wants that yet. It continues to happen because a lot of companies are focused on the short term profits and saving money by not having employees, as opposed to thinking about the long term values of who they are and what they stand for.

 

We will always invest in the experience, and we’ve had to sleep on an air bed and struggle to realize that. But it’s so much fun when you know why you’re doing what you’re doing. And for me, it comes down to stories and, you know, is it okay to share like an emotional story? We’d love to hear it.

 

Our opening season, we had a few really touching stories that have really stayed with this company, and the first one that I’ll never forget is a young intern with us. Barry was making thank you calls to our fans who buy tickets, and we called this one person that had eight tickets and we couldn’t get in touch with them.

 

And finally we got in touch and we tried to call the mother a woman’s name. And the father answered and said, I’m so sorry. You know, we have seven kids and my wife bought the tickets, but she just tragically died. Oh my gosh. And Barry came running in my office and again, it’s our first season in Savannah, and Barry, 22 years old, said, Jesse, what do I do?

 

And I said something that I was taught from the previous owner of my old team in Gastonia, probably one of the best leadership fights I’ve ever received. He always used to say to me, Jesse, what do you think? And you always empower meeting answers. So I turned to Barry and said, as an intern, Barry, what do you think he knows?

 

I don’t know, I just want to do something for this family because he was. What do you think we should do? I go, I’ll go back to you. What do you think? And he goes, well, let’s create a VIP experience? Can we make something special? I go, yes, I go whenever you feel is necessary. Whenever you feel we need to invest.

 

Whatever you feel we need to do, let’s make something special for this family. They deserve it. And so he came up with the idea to get a special jersey made for the husband with the mother’s name on the back and the amount of years they were married. And he said, I want to give the kids the best VIP experience.

 

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How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Making People Feel Like They Matter

 

They never realized, oh my gosh. So what he did is we called the father and said, hey, would really love for you guys to come. And the father said, you know, it’d probably be good for the kids to get out of the house and go out and experience something fun. We took him to the stadium. We gave him a front row seat, seven kids, and the father.

 

We presented the jersey to the father and the players came up into the stands, hung out with the kids, gave them signed bad sign balls, hung out with them for over 30 minutes and just had the time of their life. The kids were just laughing, having fun and the whole family stayed the entire game. Which in baseball is a rare thing to see Steve Steven stay an entire game.

 

They stayed the entire game and afterwards the father came up and said that was the last gift the mother ever gave the kids. I couldn’t imagine a better gift. My goodness. And those are the stories that we share. And there’s numerous of them just like that. Some not as sad, some not as heartfelt, some. But it’s the stories that make us who we are.

 

They are the ones that make us know that what we’re doing matters. Because I believe nothing matters more in making people feel like they matter. And that 22 year old intern did that that day. And that’s what this company’s built on. And now he’s our director of tickets. He’s a leader for our team, and our whole staff is doing that.

 

And every day we ask ourselves what fans’ first moments can we create today? And we built our company on stories. And I believe every company has core beliefs. But do you have stories to back them up? Yeah. Or are they just a plaque on the wall? Right. Yes, exactly, exactly. So I know that was a sad point.

 

Obviously we’re a fun company, but again, that’s who we are. That’s why we do it. It’s very, very clear we’re bringing people together and everyone wants to feel like they belong now more than ever. We’re such a culture where we’re getting into social media and we’re feeling isolated and alone. When we have 4000 people at the end of a game and we have our pep band playing on the stage in the plaza, and we have our players, our players are at the gate thanking fans when they leave.

 

We have a free s’mores station and fans are just dancing. I lose track of time at that point. Stephen. I’m just having fun. I’m dancing, I’m high five and I’m singing. It’s like 1030 at night. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be because I feel like I’m a part of something and I believe everyone. You need to be a huge customer of your own brand.

 

You need to be a fan of your own brand. And I believe that I’m one of the biggest fans of what we’re doing, because it’s something that I want to be a part of, and I hope everyone that works for us feels the same way. Well, clearly they do. And so do your fans. 

 

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How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Building a Culture

 

Let’s take this piece, everything from the Yellow Tux to the platform to planting a flag and building a culture really standing for what it is that you believe.

 

Let’s take this into some of the new business opportunities that have presented themselves because of what it is that you’ve been able to do. Right? So, I mean, you’ve obviously crafted your point of view. You’re building thought leadership around that building and creating content on a very consistent basis around that because you want to share this message.

 

But then there’s also the business side of that too. So whether that’s speaking or books and so forth, many other doors are opening up for you. So walk onward business owners through that as well, because yeah, obviously it has benefited Savannah Bananas, but now is opening up a whole other spectrum of opportunities for you to pursue too, right? Yeah.

 

I mean, with that simple vision, bring fans first to the world. We make all our decisions by that. And, you know, we’ve eliminated some parts of our business that were, you know, about to be seven figure business, parts of our business that we just cut because that didn’t follow that mission and that vision. And for instance, I didn’t share this with you, but we had numerous events at this ballpark.

 

We had, tap of the morning beer festival, which was actually a morning beer festival because you can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning. So we’ve had all you can eat food truck festivals, haunted stadiums, I mean, so many events at this ballpark. And it was a huge events division. We cut it.

 

Wow. We believe that wasn’t something that we could be the best at. And what we realized is to be able to get results on that, we had to sell and market and advertise, and that’s not what we believe in, and that’s not who we are. And so right now, we don’t market our games at all. We just sell the games because customers are our fans and are just talking about it and are always aware.

 

So we eliminate that. And so now our next division and next where we’re going is we’re like again teaching this fans first mapping experience to the world and numerous companies. And you know, speaking obviously I’m on a lot of stages, but then eventually we’re going to take the show on the road and, you know, there’s only 100,000 people that can see the Savannah Bananas in Savannah, but there’s millions that can see this all over the world.

 

And we believe we take this show and really bring this fun to people. It’s going to make a huge impact in towns all over the country and hopefully the world. So that’s the long game. I mean, that might not happen for three, 4 or 5, ten years, but we know to bring fans first. The world is where we’re going.

 

So again, I simplify everything and it helps me, I don’t know what the next step is. I know we’ve been reached out to by producers to do, you know, TV shows and stuff. If that happens, that’s great. How can we share our story more? But this is really, really exceptional. And I’m so grateful that we had a chance to connect that you said yes to my invitation.

 

I know that we’re getting really close on time. Yes. But before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, any final advice you’d like to share? Anything you think we might have missed? Jesse. And then? And then please tell Onward Nation business owners the best way to connect with you. 

 

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How to Make Yourself Stand Out: Final Advice from Jesse

 

On the back of our fans first playbook, which is our internal playbook that we share with our entire staff, our players, our coaches, our interns, our gameday staff.

 

It’s who we are, what we stand for. But in the back it says, be patient and do what you want for yourself, but be impatient in how much you give to others. And if I can leave anybody with that, it’s something that I struggle with. In the beginning I was focusing on me, me, me. When it started focusing on we, we we and focusing on others.

 

It was a game changer. So, be patient. And the results that you get for your business by being patient, how much you’re giving to others. And you’d be amazed at what happened. So hopefully people can think about that and how they’re giving to their people, their fans, their customers and everyone they touch. Awesome. Best way to connect with you.

 

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How to Make Yourself Stand Out: How to Connect with Jesse

 

Best way to connect with me. If you actually search Yellow Tux, you’ll find me anywhere, Yellow Tux Jesse. I do post every single day on LinkedIn and, Find your Yellow Tux is the name of the book but, yeah, just reach out. I learned a great lesson many years ago. When I was 25, I sent an email to Mark Cuban.

 

He wrote back within an hour, and that made a huge impact on me. So, reach out. Love to help in any way. Okay, Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and listen to Jesse’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do. The key is to take all of this generosity, all of this knowledge, all the insights that he shared with you.

 

Take them, apply them into your business right away, and accelerate your results. And Jesse, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. And I am grateful, my friend, that you said yes to come on to the show and be our mentor, our guide to help us move our businesses onward to that next level. Thank you so much, my friend. Thank you. I loved every minute. 

 

Keep making an impact, my friend. This episode is complete so head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

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